Abram Amsel

Abram Amsel (December 4, 1922 – August 31, 2006) was a Canadian-born American psychologist and faculty member at several universities. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he conducted influential research into concepts of reward and nonreward in learning and behavior. Later, his research shifted from learning theory to neurobiology.

Early life Amsel was born in Montreal, Quebec on December 4, 1922. He earned undergraduate and master's degrees in psychology from Queen's University (1944) and McGill University (1946), respectively. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa, where his mentor was learning and motivation researcher Kenneth Spence, who had been a protégé of Clark L. Hull at Yale University.

An alternative account of the FE, now termed the omission effect and supported subsequently by a series of experiments, was presented by Staddon and Innis in 1966, and the topic rather faded from the animal-learning literature.

Later in his career, Amsel's research interests evolved from learning theory toward neurobiology as he worked to understand developmental differences in his young and mature rat subjects. Amsel founded the journal Animal Learning & Behavior in 1973; it is now known as Learning & Behavior. He was elected chairman of the board of the Psychonomic Society in 1978.

He became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1951 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. He died of Alzheimer's disease in Austin on August 31, 2006. Amsel was survived by his wife Tess and their children. Amsel had a Jaguar in his garage for many years; he said that the smell of the leather reminded him of when he was dating Tess.